In August, the research team saw an increase in a new variant of the Mirai IoT Botnet, Echobot, which has launched widespread attacks against a range of IoT devices. First seen in May 2019, Echobot has exploited over 50 different vulnerabilities, causing a sharp rise in the ‘Command Injection Over HTTP’ vulnerability which has impacted 34% of organizations globally.

August has also seen the Emotet botnet’s offensive infrastructure becoming active again, after it shut down its services two months ago. Emotet was the biggest botnet operating in the first half of 2019. Although no major campaigns have been observed as yet, it is likely that it will be used to start spam campaigns soon.

August 2019’s Top 10 ‘Most Wanted’ Malware:

*The arrows relate to the change in rank compared to the previous month.

This month XMRig keeps leading the top malware list, followed by Jsecoin, both with a global impact of 7%. Dorkbot is in the third place, impacting 6% of organizations worldwide.

↔ XMRig– XMRig is an open-source CPU mining software used for the mining process of the Monero cryptocurrency, and first seen in-the-wild on May 2017.

↔ Jsecoin – Jsecoin is JavaScript miner that can be embedded in websites. With JSEcoin, you can run the miner directly in your browser in exchange for an ad-free experience, in-game currency and other incentives.

↔ Dorkbot- Dorkbot is an IRC-based Worm designed to allow remote code execution by its operator, as well as the download of additional malware to the infected system.

↑ Trickbot– Trickbot is a dominant banking Trojan constantly being updated with new capabilities, features and distribution vectors. This enables Trickbot to be a flexible and customizable malware that can be distributed as part of multi purposed campaigns.

↑ Agentesla- AgentTesla is an advanced RAT functioning as a keylogger and a password stealer. AgentTesla is capable of monitoring and collecting the victim’s keyboard input, system clipboard, taking screenshots, and exfiltrating credentials belonging to of a variety of software installed on a victim’s machine (including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Outlook email client).

↓ Emotet – Emotet is an advanced, self-propagate and modular Trojan. Emotet once used to employ as a banking Trojan, and recently is used as a distributer to other malware or malicious campaigns. It uses multiple methods for maintaining persistence and Evasion techniques to avoid detection. In addition, it can be spread through phishing spam emails containing malicious attachments or links.

↑ Cryptoloot – Cryptoloot is crypto-Miner, using the victim’s CPU or GPU power and existing resources for crypto mining – adding transactions to the blockchain and releasing new currency. It was a competitor to Coinhive, trying to pull the rug under it by asking less percent of revenue from websites.

↔ Formbook- Formbook is infoStealer that harvests credentials from various web browsers, collects screenshots, monitors and logs keystrokes, and can download and execute files according to its C&C orders.

↑Lokibot– Lokibot is an Info Stealer distributed mainly by phishing emails, and is used to steal various data such as email credentials, as well as passwords to CryptoCoin wallets and FTP servers.

August’s Top 3 ‘Most Wanted’ Mobile Malware:

This month Lotoor is the most prevalence Mobile malware, followed by AndroidBauts and Triada.

Lotoor – Hack tool that exploits vulnerabilities on Android operating system in order to gain root privileges on compromised mobile devices.

AndroidBauts – Adware targeting Android users that exfiltrates IMEI, IMSI, GPS Location and other device information and allows the installation of third party apps and shortcuts on mobile devices.

Triada – Modular Backdoor for Android which grants super-user privileges to downloaded malware, helping them to embed into system processes. Triada has also been seen spoofing URLs in the browser.

August’s ‘Most Exploited’ vulnerabilities:

This month, SQL Injection techniques retain first place in the top exploited vulnerabilities list, closely followed by the OpenSSL TLS DTLS Heartbeat Information Disclosure vulnerability, both impacting 39% of organizations globally. On third place MVPower DVR Remote Code Execution vulnerability with a global impact of 38% of organizations worldwide.

↔SQL Injection (several techniques) – Inserting an injection of SQL query in input from client to application, while exploiting a security vulnerability in an application’s software.

↔ OpenSSL TLS DTLS Heartbeat Information Disclosure (CVE-2014-0160; CVE-2014-0346) – An information disclosure vulnerability exists in OpenSSL. The vulnerability is due to an error when handling TLS/DTLS heartbeat packets. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to disclose memory contents of a connected client or server.

↑ Command Injection Over HTTP – A command Injection over HTTP vulnerability has been reported. A remote attacker can exploit this issue by sending a specially crafted request to the victim. Successful exploitation would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the target machine.

↓Joomla Object Injection Remote Command Execution) – A remote command execution vulnerability has been reported in Joomla platforms. The vulnerability is due to lack of validation over input objects that can lead to remote code execution. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious request to the victim. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can result in the execution of arbitrary code in the context of the target user.

↓ PHP DIESCAN information disclosure – An information disclosure vulnerability has been reported in the PHP pages. Successful exploitation could lead to the disclosure of sensitive information from the server.